When River woke up to rake up the mess made in their garden, it was already early-mid morning which was bright and awash with wispy clouds with a faint chorus of birds, which were probably artificially produced by Karen's mega sound system on the 7th floor.
It gave her a sense of tranquil, she'd explain. It's a violation to the humble working class-actually-singing birds that swept the shit from Capitalist birds, scraping away their entire life due to jobs lost to automation, Tiffany would argue.
The morning after the garden concert, the garden was fucking trashed. This didn't bother River because even though they had specifically hired a garden band to tend to their vegetation, they were currently lounging in the garbage dumpsters attempting to cook garbage ratatouille from scraps of poisoned, dead rat.
These thoughts were thunk by River as he whistles the Skechers song while spraying water on every vegetative being within five feet of him. He noticed there was delicate dew that had formed on the garden plants, that were far too yellow to actually be dew. He ignored that and continued watering plants and also Chelsea. It was hard to distinguish her from the grass when she was wearing green herself, running into the garden with certain purpose this early at mid-morning.
"What the fuck, River?!" a very agonized Chelsea yelped at him before hurling piss covered plants at him which she somehow managed to uproot in 10 seconds. River squeals and drops the hose, spraying the both of them even more. Grabbing the hose, Chelsea begins chasing after River, her drenched bag and shoes forgotten on the garden path.
"Stop it bro," River pants loudly dodging her fifth attempt at shoving the plants up his nostrils, "I'm allergic to pea." he pleads helplessly. Chelsea grunts triumphantly and, throwing the plants onto his ninth ab, kicks him one final time in the nuts and goes to leave.
The glinting (or rather, the lack of) of the diamond fountain makes her stop in her tracks. "River," she breathes out, "isn't that your dad's most prized fountain?" making River look up in surprise as this was the first time Chelsea had said his name not following it with a declaration of war.
"What about it?" he asks rising from the ground and dusting dirt off his SpongeBob pajama pants. Chelsea is saved from answering this question when River gasps horrendously and attempts to faint in her arms, making her screech and push him away in disgust.
"Argh noooo" River moans, "It was Dad's favourite diamond, who would do this??" he sobs, beating his fists into the ground. The diamond that was in the fountain yesterday, was gone today. Chelsea looks up when she hears someone approaching them from the gate connecting the mansion to neighbouring smaller mansion.
Tissue paper in hand, Riley was marching towards them with a determined expression on her face. "Hello," she announces, "I am here to help clean your wounds, River." she says, and upon receiving a look of relief from Chelsea, begins checking his temperature with a thermometer she produced from a mini-first aid kit.
Chelsea rolls her eyes and turning around, begins walking toward the kitchen door. She ended up sprinting eventually, because who thought it would be a good idea to have a 420 sq. metre garden. Riley follows her, dragging River along in one hand and carrying the first aid kit in the other.
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His red eyes gleamed as they bore into hers and as he came closer Tiffany found it harder and harder to breathe. And then all of a sudden, Taylor's mouth was on hers and they were making out. She gasped as their tongues battled for dominance, his soon winning and taking the lead. She felt herself becoming weak in his arms as she latches on to his neck and wraps her legs around his waist. His arms slide lower from her back and grab on to her-
Tiffany woke with a gasp, startling herself enough to roll off the bed and land on the floor with a thump. She laid there for a moment or two, panting as she got over the steamy events of her dream. What did this mean? Well, as Chelsea would say, it meant that she was a horny fuck, but never mind what she would say seeing as she could hear her voice screaming out profanities at someone (probably River) from the backyard.
Heaving herself to her feet, she stumbles into the bathroom to get dressed. After showering and managing to make herself look less disheveled and middle class peasant-like, she heads on downstairs for breakfast with her lovely family. And Chad. And also Chelsea.
Speaking of family, her dad hadn't come up to her room to wake her today and offer her orange juice. Strange, she thinks Dad is usually the first to find out about the occurrences in the garden and put a stop to it before breakfast. She shrugs it off and continues her descent from the 4th floor, making sure not to trip down the stairs, like her mother that one day.
The sun glinting through the large window blinds her momentarily and when she puts her hand up to block the sunlight, she notices two things. First, River and Chelsea seemed to have halted in their path and looked like they were actually having a conversation together that did not involve hurling curse words and/or other objects at each other.
The second thing she noticed was that the ground floor window of the neighbouring house was wide open, revealing a adolescent girl spying on their garden with a pair of binoculars. She reaches up to adjust her sunglasses and dusts the almost non-existent particles of dust from her designer skirt, Riley she thinks, was a strange character.
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"Chad, I've told you so many times, you don't have to stay here just because my husband said you can." Karen slams her hands down on the kitchen counter, refusing to give into the urge to slam her head against it. "C'mon Karen, see, I would move out but-" he pauses and then blinks, "Where is Ernest, anyway? We didn't get any bro time during that concert."
Karen gives him an incredulous look and shakes her head, "Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was, you're going to have to help me find that goddamn diamond, Ernest would simply die if he found out that it was missing."
"I'm telling you, Karen, Neil fucking saw the guy shove it down his jeans!" Chad is sounding exasperated, downing the last of his orange juice from a shot glass before he's hit in the face with a fine piece of muslin Karen used as a dishrag.
"Stop telling me the same thing and send out a sketch to the Interpol to find this guy!" Karen yells at him, throwing a disgusted glance at the orange honey barbecued sausages on the table. Chad peels the dishrag off his face and is about to retort to the argument when River walks in, being physically supported by a sweet faced neighbor followed by a disoriented Chelsea who was for some reason drenched in her clothes looking like she's been rolling around in garden filth at 10 AM.
"Hello Riley, it's good to see you here again," Karen offers her a smile before glaring at River and Chad together this time. "River you're not even hurt. And is that- is that piss on you?"
River grunts in response to signal his pain. "Mom I told Chelsea I was allergic to pea but she didn't listen,"
"You aren't allergic to pea it's just peanuts. And no they're not just pea's nuts."
"Mom" River wails, "We have bigger problems now, Dad's favourite diamond is missing." nearly kicking out at Riley as she applies ointment to his elbow, and then turning towards her, smirks and says, "Thanks for cleaning me up, babe."
Karen sighs exasperatedly, looking for a clean spot on her marbled breakfast table to smash her head against. "That is what we've been talking about, River. Your dad will have an aneurysm if he found out about it. It was a beautiful gem he brought in Vienna in '69." She sounded like she was about to go off on a rant about Steven Jobes and Billy Goats and their shared money spending endeavors.
"You know we need to find it soon, I can't stick around for long, Taylor's coming around for football practice." River replies, allowing Riley to casually examine him for broken bones with a reflex hammer.
Chad is suddenly hit with a memory from last night, one of the boys at the concert-the girl's date-no, the boy's friend, whatever, he had seen him leaving before the concert ended with a large package between his legs. And no, when he said package, he didn't mean like that, he meant like an actual package, too weirdly shaped to be that kind of package. Anyway, moving on from packages.
"I saw your daughter's boyfriend with the diamond," he proclaims loudly above the incessant chatter in the kitchen. Everyone stops talking and looks at him, "Tiffany's?" Karen asks, confused.
"Oh, you mean Taylor," River laughs, "see mom, I told you she had a boyfriend." Riley swoons at the smug look on his face.
"Where is Tiffany anyway then? It's half past ten." Chelsea says in a monotone, making everyone notice her still dripping muddy water on the kitchen floor. "Or Ernest? If he hasn't been up long that gives us more time to look for the perpetrator." Chad adds in, proud of his skillful observations at the concert, though it didn't take much to notice the abnormal bulge in Taylor's pants that night and how badly he'd wanted to forget such an occurrence.
"Where is dad, anyway?" River asks as well, Riley scooping orange pancakes into his mouth. Karen replies to these with a shrug, for she herself hadn't seen him around since the concert although she did notice his hair products in great disarray in their room.
River sticks his head out the hallway and yells, "Dad, where are you?", he does not get a response and after 3 more attempts, he sits back on the chair with a grunt and Riley continues applying ointment on him like she never stopped.
"I'm going to go wake up Tiffany then," Chelsea sighs once more, rising from the chair to head towards her room.
The click-clack of footsteps makes them look up towards the doorway. Tiffany walks towards them gracefully without tripping on her heels even once, making Chelsea envy her gracefulness. There is a moment of silence before River stands abruptly and storms towards Tiff, "Your boyfriend is a thief." he lets her know. "Who?" Tiffany asks, shaking the box full of golden cereal into a bowl, "Taylor?"
"How many boyfriends do you have?" Riley asks with a look that resembled jealousy inhabiting her features. Tiffany stares at her and then as though something dawned on her,"Hey! You're that girl I saw looking in at our garden from-" Riley coughs loudly, "How lovely, moving on," she says in a very poor attempt at covering up her purely accidental voyeurism.
"Tiffany," Karen says sternly with her hands on her hips, "why have you brought a thief into the household?" Her eyes widened, "Taylor's not a thief, whatever gave you that idea?" Tiffany huffs, slurping on her golden cereal.
"I saw him stealing your dad's treasured diamond," Chad informs her, "it was like, this enormous package, in his front pocket." he adds, gesturing with his hands to show how large.
"Aw, no," Tiffany says, sounding rather disappointed, "I thought that was like his, y'know, package." Karen shoots her daughter a disgusted look as everyone else in the kitchen let out an ew. "Alright, alright." Tiff says, putting her hands up and walking backwards towards the kitchen door, "Well then, I've got a comfy bed and a large TV waiting for me," she clicks her teeth and heads off, adding as though an afterthought, "Come on, Chelsea."
They walk up to Tiffany's room of the 5th floor, it was much too pink and much too bright to belong to a high schooler but such as it was, it did.
Tiffany flops down onto her bed as Chelsea begins looking through her closet for something decent to change into, because someone happened to have drenched her in water just minutes before. She digs through a mountain of clothing before coming out of the walk-in closet (hah) and holding it up triumphantly.
"Chelsea," Tiffany calls, two meters away, from her bed, "Where'd you even get that flannel from?" she squints at the offending piece of clothing Chelsea has just brought out. "I don't even own any flannels." She says, trying to get a closer look at it.
"The flannels always find me, Tiffany." She says seriously. After changing into much dryer clothes and throwing a comfy flannel on top, Chelsea puts her hands on her hips and sighs, "Well, I've got something to tell you."
"What?" Tiffany, her interest suddenly quirked, "Have you finally agreed with me and gone on a date with that girl I was telling you about, she's gay, too, you know." She says, raising an eyebrow.
Chelsea scrunches up her face in distaste, "What? No! why would I go on a date with someone I barely know just because 'they're gay too'? And anyway, that's not even what I wanted to tell you about."
"What is it then, Chelsea, I haven't got all day." She waves her arms dramatically and falls off the bed with a thump. Chelsea ignores her muttering about how this can't be happening twice in one day and continues, "Y'know the new girl? Brighten?" upon seeing no sign of recognition on Tiffany's face, she sighs, "The Mormon one?"
Realization dawns on Tiffany's face and she nods multiple times, "And?"
"Well," Chelsea takes a deep breath, "She asked me to go the park with her." She says in wonder, as though she was not deserving of a park date with a fellow high schooler.
"Ahh, that's amusing." Tiffany is tapping way too rapidly on her phone and horror dawns on Chelsea, what the fuck is she announcing to her crew-of-really-unnecessary-cupids right now? If the only lunch spot open in school for the next week would be next to Brighten or how all their classes would somehow line up, this would be the reason.
"Tiffany give me that fucking phone-"
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Chelsea takes a swig from her water bottle and swings depressedly on the playground swings. Creak says the 15 year old swing. She glares at it. As if she didn't have enough problems to deal with, a swing collapsing on her would probably be the cherry on her unsurprisingly bitter cake. She looks at her watch again, just in case time had felt bad for her and decided to speed up a little. But it was all meaningless, Chelsea had taken her chance, bit the bullet even, and yet here she was, sitting alone in a children's playground and quite Brighten-less.
She was almost certain that she'd been stood up on the date-not-really-a-date when the swing next to her creaked loudly and brought her back from her thoughts. Her head snapped to her side, expecting Brighten to manifest but instead faces Mr. Michaelson. He looked wan and worn down, his billionaire gleam usually indicated by a minimum of 5 branded accessories was there no more. Apart from the authentic Charlie Chaplin Bowler Hat which hung low on his head.
"Mr. Michaleson?" Chelsea makes sure, he looks up at her and it was indeed him though the hat itself said as much. "Why're you down here? Everyone's looking for you back at home."
Ernest heaves a big sigh, looking down at the dirt dejectedly. "It doesn't mean much to me anymore, all this grandeur. What really matters is only apparent once you lose sight of it."
Although this could mean that Mr. Michaelson was finally considering giving away all his grossly excessive earthly assets to the general betterment of society, she gave it a thought. Chelsea didn't understand him all that well, but in a way she did know what he meant.
"I guess that'd be right," She replies, starting to swing slightly. "But life moves on, doesn't it? What seems like the most important thing will turn out to be pretty insignificant, if not now then well.. eventually."
Ernest makes a noise resembling a small cry, and Chelsea pats him on the back comfortingly. A small crow lands down on Ernest's bowler hat, gently picking at it. Then the mid morning seemed somber almost, comforting a billionaire on issues unknown and feeding a bird scraps of pea plant, such a Sunday would suffice Chelsea.
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a/n: i don't even fucking know what to say, call this a filler and ill steal your cat's balls. listen to the Skechers song, more from River's playlist will drop soon. did you know Putin was gifted a puppy by Japan? it's probably an adult dog now, but still.
also if you're feeling sad and don't want to burden those around you with the explanation, search for "Mozart scat". You won't regret it. unless you do.
His black eyes glinted as they bore into hers and as he came closer Tiffany found it harder and harder to breathe. And then all of a sudden, Taylor's mouth was on hers and they were making out. She gasped as their tongues battled for dominance-